Mongolia (MNN) — Mongolia is a culture with a mixture of atheism, Buddhism and Shamanism all rolled into one. It is a country of 2.6 million people. In 2000, Far East Broadcasting Company started a broadcasting Christian radio in Mongolia.
Director of FEBC-Mongolia and President of Wind FM Bat Tuvshintsengel says, "We're basically dealing with an audience that has no concept of God (and) no concept of salvation. And so we are established there as sort of an entry into the community, and we're working along with the churches there to try and get them involved in Gospel broadcasting."
Since 1997 there has been an explosion of Christianity. The Christian population went from zero to more than 40,000 today. Tuvshintsengel says the challenge is obvious. "The church has been wide in evangelism, but in terms of discipleship we're lacking a lot of capacity like leadership. That's why the churches have a goal to make 10-percent of our population disciples of Jesus Christ by the year 2020."
According to Tuvshintsengel, radio is key to this effort. "We have 21 provinces, so there are some centralized places where we can actually place radio stations, like FM stations. So we can reach out to about 80,000 (people) per village."
Wind FM is on the air in the capital city, Ulaanbaatar, reaching over a million people. Tuvshintsengel says they've also started buying airtime on another station in the province of Hentij. "We're actually working together with the local church as we syndicate our programs and it's creating a lot of response. So that's kind of a sign to do the same thing in the other 20 provinces."
Tuvshintsengel describes the responses Wind FM is receiving. "We have received questions (from) people who are really angry (asking), 'Why are you talking about this foreign religion?' But then we have received some message (asking) 'Where can we find a Bible? I want to go to this church and try it out.'"
However, Mongolia isn't the end of their vision. Tuvshintsengal says Inner Mongolia, China, is their next step. "We have six million Mongolians living in China who have no chance of exposure to the Gospel. And so we want to reach out to these people via shortwave. Today shortwave is still very, very prominent."
Recruiting a Christian for broadcasting in the Inner Mongolian dialect is underway.
Funding is needed to buy airtime on radio stations, but it's also needed to purchase equipment to establish radio stations in these areas.
